Leo's horse is level 32 now, so he gets hungry rather quickly - a 10-level difference between pet and owner means it just takes 83 minutes to go from 100 to 0 on the starvation bar. Still, Leo has kept busy all day, while Enchantrella did plenty of mining this morning, and even had a quick canter over to the Great Horn Beasts to gain a skill point or two after lunch. Just to keep the Elva account active I took his archer out for half an hour to the Bandits and Berserkers, before Kee had her turn - going just around the corner from there to the Blood Frenzies.

I only had the briefest of chats with Damor, who has reached the dizzy heights of level 70 now. With any luck I'll be allowed to go to Egeha to steal a small proportion of the experience she gets from killing the Boucu Demons before too long, but at the moment my priority is to get together the 205 skill points I need for level five of Robe Mastery. Once I have that, well, levelling up a few times will be the aim, as I can't start to learn the other two level 38 skills until I have enough attribute points (the points one can put in strength, dexterity, intelligence or constitution) for them. Flame Field needs 35 in intelligence, not counting bonus points from accessories and armour (I currently have 25), while Fear needs 17 in dexterity (I currently have 12, plus a fair number more from the accessories that I've got equipped). That should be a fun skill, it makes the monster run away for a short period of time! The advice I have is to boost the intelligence first, all the way up to level 46, when I should put 1 point in dexterity - for levels 47 to 56 all the points should go to dexterity, before switching back to intelligence again so that 100 intelligence comes up at level 70, when there is a skill that needs that amount.

Well the Blood Frenzies behaved much as they usually do, though I managed to avoid any of them attacking my drake. Things got a little crowded at times, there seemed to be other people farming them coming in on my patch from three different directions, so that often the one I was going to attack next got pulled away by someone else at the last moment. The drops were nothing special - except for the three Heaven Stones, that is! Since I'm a level higher than the BFs now they don't give a huge amount of experience, it's just that they die rather more quickly than Gnoll Lancers. An 11% rise in experience is I suppose pretty good at this sort of level; 2023 pet points isn't bad either, and 61 skill points moves me along usefully towards that Robe Mastery target. Since I'm out during the day tomorrow, I probably won't get on to Last Chaos until the evening, round about Quiz time or a little later - I'll miss at least the first two hours of the regular Sunday event, which will probably be double skill points again, I hope that it goes on for the rest of the evening. I may well give Leo the day off entirely, he has been working very hard recently.

A Late Start - May 18th

It was about 7:00pm UK time when I logged in; as the Sunday event was going on, Kee dashed straight for Merac and the Blood Frenzies, and luckily the event, which was indeed double skill exp, carried on until my log-out time of approaching ten o'clock. The fighting was straightforward enough, though again I was squeezed a bit later on by other BF-fighters on either side.

Just as I was about to log off Zeratus was asking if someone in the guild could buy him some Mana Stealer Potions - these cost 99 aeria points in the Item Mall, but last an hour, and would make his farming rather more productive as he'd not have to sit down and take "mana breaks" between fights... so, useful for someone who doesn't have high natural mana regeneration, especially when an event is on. Angel of Lyght wasn't able to help, which just left me. I tend to translate ap into gold by starting from the fact that pet colouring crystals cost 199 ap and go for approaching two million in gold, and Zeratus seemed happy enough with the idea of paying a million each. When I realised he wanted more than one, I remembered that I did have a pack of five of these in my "records" section of the Item Mall, where I keep stuff that isn't yet needed by any particular character - and I'd bought it at a sale price, apparently, though I have no idea what that price was. So I transferred the whole pack to Zeratus...I suggested 3 million would be quite enough, but he was so happy that he traded me 3.5 million.

After that minor departure from routine, which at least gave me something to write about, I transferred my recently acquired loot across to MistressDomino, who'd just been standing in Randol in a "solo party" with me, and logged out. MistressDomino will be selling items overnight, so fingers crossed that she does well, and even manages to sell some Large Attack Potions this time. A quick check reveals that she has made her first sale, two Heaven Stones at 625,000 each, so that's a good beginning...

The experience gain for the evening was a little under 7%, plus 1445 pet points, and, thanks to the doubling nature of the Event, 99 skill points, which brings that final level of Robe Mastery within reach tomorrow, with any luck.

Robes Mastered - May 19th

After his day off, Leo returned to his horse-training duties enthusiastically - the horse reached level 33 fairly early in the morning, and level 34 by mid-evening! His day was not without incident, though, as when he'd tempted the Treant up to the eyrie, he found another knight, MrMagoo, there, with his own Treant. Leo moved along to the far end, and set to work, but later I found that the two Treants had come close together, taking both knights with them - and later still, somehow both knights had switched to fighting the same Treant, which, after a while, had died. We both got some experience from that death, not something a pet levelling knight wants too much of, though Leo is only 2% of the way into level 22 so it doesn't matter for him.

MrMagoo's horse can't be particularly high level, as the player doesn't seem to need to check up very often - he's probably asleep or at work I guess. Unfortunately MrMagoo has spent quite a few hours just standing right on the outside edge of the world, being attacked by that remaining Treant, but not attacking it, and thus not getting any pet points. When that Treant decided that Leo was not its main target, I went off and lured back a new Treant, and am trying to keep it well clear of the other one. Except for yesterday, Leo has been pet-training every day there, and this is the first time another knight has chosen precisely the same spot, though others have been seen further along, or just at ground level...though there they run the risk of somebody coming along and "helping" them by killing their adversary, or even bringing in a few Elder Drakes to kill them and their pet.

MistressDomino did some selling overnight in Randol, on the Cariae-3 sub-server as usual; it seems to me that some items seem to be rising in price. It's difficult now to find Item Drop Boosters at 120,000, which for a while seems to have been the standard price; ToolAids seem still to be at around 20-22,000, but Moonstones, well, almost every merchant who is advertising having them in stock has sold out, so the ones MistressDomino sold last night at 24,500 gold probably went rather quickly. I've always thought of Heaven Stones as being not much over 500,000 each, but it looks as if they are significantly more expensive now, with 625,000 qualifying as "priced to sell". Which makes it even nicer when a Blood Frenzy drops one, of course. Oh, Mistress D even managed to sell a few of her supply of Large Attack Potions last night, the effect of last week's Item Mall sale price must be wearing off.

Enchantrella did plenty of mining, and collected 22 quality stones, 41 imperfect stones, and 76 flawed stones. But by mid-afternoon Kee was ready to go into action, and was able before food time to get the final 22 skill points I needed to get the top level of Robe Mastery. So for a while the priority is going to be experience rather than skill points. Kee needs to get some more attribute points, and that means getting more levels...

Unfortunately Damor wasn't around very much today, so there wasn't an opportunity to hitch a lift to Egeha and join her for some Boucu Demon bashing. I guess I can still farm for skill points, and put them safely away in a "special skill" like armoursmithing, but it looks as if Kee has reached a bit of a plateau now. Just over 6% experience gain today shows how flat things will be, against regular foes, but 1301 pet points isn't bad - and 45 skill points isn't too bad a score either, given the hours involved. Oh, there was a little action with Kaerella too - but this was the level 8 healer over on the new Hatzring server, so it was back to collecting Jaguar teeth so that Merchant Geres could make some more of her necklaces. It's interesting to see the prices people charge over there - most items, other than ones the NPCs sell, seem to be quite a lot cheaper there, presumably because there isn't anything like as much money in circulation.

Rather Limited Time - May 20th

Leo has kept busy, and his pet horse has now safely reached level 35, which means it takes little over an hour for the poor animal to starve - he was down to 16 points on one occasion when I finally remembered to check up. MrMagoo was up there too again, but we kept far enough apart to avoid problems, and he left later in the day. The Treants have behaved themselves, the only problem I had was once I tried to adjust the view rather quickly, which brought up the "send error message?" window. So the game had to be restarted, and Leo had to teleport back, and lure a new Treant up to the eyrie. That didn't take too long, so by the end of the day the horse was around a third of the way through his new level. The number of points needed per level does start to stretch out a bit in the mid-thirties, but the target is to get this horse up to level 38, if I can. Enchantrella, out mining again, managed to get that same error message a little later, again from a sudden change in the viewing angle. Oh well, it allowed me to do some stuff on this computer that can be a bit prone to slowdowns if I have Last Chaos running at the same time.

Poor Keerella did spend some time shopping around this afternoon, but got nothing to show for it except a few Pan Flutes and Drake Eggs bought slightly cheaply at 12,000 gold, which hopefully MistressDomino will be able to sell at 17,500 one night soon. Moonstones continue to be in short supply, I only noticed a couple of people selling them at 25,000, I suspect they didn't last long. Kee actually got a couple of disconnections - if you click on someone to look at what they are selling, and the merchant window doesn't come up at once, you know some lag is involved, and you are stuck there until either the merchant window finally opens, or the disconnection window appears.

My level 23 rogue borrowed the Pierce of Wind, and headed off to fight Butchers for about an hour which, as they give her around .16% experience each, gave a significant boost. They aren't too good at giving skill exp, though, generally one needs to fight critters nearer one's own level for that. With the improved evasion, and horse buffs, she didn't take any damage - but I don't think the Butchers, and the occasional Pilferer, dropped anything better than a ToolAid.

Kee fared better when I managed to just squeeze in about 25 minutes against the Blood Frenzies - they dropped a Heaven Stone, which at current prices has to be worth at least 625,000. It was only a brief session, so a little over 1% experience was all I got, and 247 pet points - and 8 skill points. Not a lot compared to Zeratus, who was saying that he managed to get 140 skill points in an hour, towards the number he needs for the level 50 skills. Of course he was using one of those Mana Stealer Potions, and a skill point booster that cost him 3.5 million as well. Mundo, who had recently returned to the Norcaine guild, has left again; apparently Rastatitan arranged it specially, to help him to level up in a guild that goes to Egeha a lot. All clever stuff...

A Bad Day - May 21st

As Leo was leading his Treant back down from the eyrie last night just before logging off, I saw MrMagoo - and he was lying dead on the ground. I hope that wasn't anything to do with the Treant that was liberated when I got the "send error report?" closure earlier, I suppose it might have headed back that way and given MrMagoo two Treants to fight, but I hadn't seen any sign of that when I returned.

Well, the new "Mystery" themed week has begun, after the server downtime and a new minor patch - and it has been a terrible day. I kept on losing my connection! Leo usually doesn't suffer from disconnections, as he is only automatically fighting his Treant there is no huge flow of information needed - but after the initial set-up went okay, a while later when I checked he was disconnected, and I've run him back out there, only to get the disconnection window almost immediately he arrives, too many times. One recent attempt had him fighting for about ten minutes before the disconnection came, which was better than most - the horse should have reached level 36 this afternoon, but is still on level 35.

Damor suggested switching the router off and back on again, but that didn't seem to make any difference. Kee was doing some shopping around in town, and got disconnections before and after that. Damor did talk about a trip to Egeha, but really, with the unreliable connection it wouldn't have been much use.

Keerella did manage to get to the Berserkers at her second attempt, the first one ending with a sudden absence of monsters as she rode forward. She only stayed connected for about 20 minutes, though, so a Moonstone was the only useful bit of loot she received. I'd remarked on the guild channel earlier that there seemed to be more Heaven Stones than Moonstones available to buy, it is rather strange how uncommon they seem to have become lately.

Mining for stones is something that is very vulnerable to disconnections - but perhaps it is significant that, while Leo has had disconnections, my level 8 healer over in the new Hatzring server was able to mine away without any problems. So my activities may need to switch, at least temporarily, to there, if things don't improve. It was interesting to find out that the areas that are so laggy in Juno in the old server seem exactly the same there...

Part of the new "Mystery" theme are some packages in the Item Mall with undisclosed contents, I hope that the Wet Paint Wiki gives listings soon, though one with "Item Drop Boosters, Golden Magnifying Glasses, Spell Books of Luck, and a Party Recall Scroll" is perhaps less than entirely mysterious. And, as usual with packages, it is half the ap cost of the individual items, so it may be worth investing in. The Last Chaos website also says that "This weekend we will be having Mystery events, including the awesome mystery experience event where we will be raising experience on all servers by an undisclosed amount, beginning on Saturday and ending in Memorial Day's double experience extravaganza!" So it looks as if Britain's Bank Holiday Monday coincides with an American day off, which is useful.

A later trip to the Blood Frenzies did last a bit longer, but that got a bit laggy too, perhaps because a large anti-virus patch was being downloaded, and there were some almost-disconnections, with nothing happening for 30 seconds or so after targetting a Blood Frenzy, or my poor drake unable to pick up the loot for a while. I'm surprised that in the end Kee was up as much as 3.5% on the day! 938 pet points takes my drake pretty close to his next level, while in the circumstances 33 skill points isn't bad. I still need another 23 before I can "bank" them in Advanced Armoursmith level 3; it's lucky that crafting skills only have three levels per type, after that one moves on to the final three levels, which are Expert Armoursmith, and need 452 skill points between them.

A Good Start - May 22nd

The connection seemed fully recovered this morning, I'm happy to report - indeed, Leo's final stint last night was uninterrupted, until the time came to switch off. This morning his horse swiftly went up to level 36, and to celebrate (and because 100 starvation points now only last 66 minutes) I started to use three-hour Pet Experience Potions, bringing points gained up to around 2000 per hour.

Keerella logged on early, just to transfer a few items over to MistressDomino, and I found a gift waiting for me! It was a special one-hour experience booster, with a message from Sheele saying that, if Kee was going to be the GM of Norcaine, she needed to get more levels. It was great to receive a gift like that - and doubly great that Sheele, who has been academically absent for quite a while, is able to take an interest in Last Chaos again now.

So Enchantrella logged on afterwards, and after transferring 300 quality stones, 150 imperfect stones, and 250 flawed stones across to Leo, headed out to do some afk mining to replenish her stocks a bit. She has to be checked up on every five to ten minutes, to be started on the next ore vein, and by mid-morning the following message had appeared: "Hey u! Well I guess you are busy working in real life - so when u get this message (barring any disconnections of course) I'll be here until Sunday, so please don't log into my Ratel account until Monday, hehe. Hope to hear from u later. Dam I missed u and the others terribly!" That was from Elvastar of course! It's fantastic to hear from him, and to know he'll be around over the next few days... but is this just a temporary return, is he going to vanish again for some weeks, starting on Monday...?

An hour or so with the Blood Frenzies got me the 23 more skill points I needed for the final level of Advanced Armoursmith, so when after my tea break I saw that Damor and Itura were online, I managed to get myself invited to join them fighting the Boucu Demons in Egeha. While Itura is in Norcaine, Damor is in a guild called Dominion, and a rogue from that guild, Escadalia, was also there, so we teamed up to "ks" from Damor; I used the Platinum Blessed Iris that Sheele had given me, and made pretty good use of it too, as I levelled up, and am now level 39. The fighting went pretty smoothly; I remember Damor mentioned once she was down to 60 hp, and a little later a Skinwalker got "pulled" along with the Boucu Demon so we all had to make a speedy trip back to town, but otherwise, a very productive time, and Damor did get a few armour drops. There was some talk of using a second iris, but Damor had been playing for a while and was starting to get tired - she has to be up at 6:00am tomorrow - so we stopped when she reached the 75% mark on the way to her next level. She is currently level 70, and ranked at #41 on the Cariae server group.

Speaking of Monday, that is, as well as being a day off in the UK ("Spring Bank Holiday"), Memorial Day in the USA, and we are promised double experience and skill exp all day, which should be useful. Before that we have for the Friday "Happy Hour" double experience, and over Saturday and Sunday the experience gain will be raised by a "mystery amount" - I'm not sure if it will just be the same amount all the time, or if they will be playing about with it. It is lucky that I bought my next set of mage armour, the level 45-47 (though one can start wearing such items without penalty 5 levels earlier) "Asuquted" set, today. It is all +4 for the usual little fairy to hover at one's shoulder, and only cost me 14 million, which seemed a good buy.

Thanks to Sheele's Iris, I got very nearly a whole 100% of a level from the trip to Egeha, and in all, including a couple of Merac quests afterwards, I got a little over 106% experience today. As well as me reaching level 39, my drake reached level 36, and has got 1500 or so points into his next level - and Leo's horse reached level 37 thanks to the pet experience-doubling pills, and indeed should only need around 4000 more points tomorrow to reach the target, level 38, by the time Leo logs out. Add 41 skill points, and it has been a very good day's work.

Onwards And Upwards - May 23rd

Despite a disconnection at about 11:30 UK time (which seems a quite common time for that to happen, I think), Leo managed to get the horse up to level 38 just before lunch - and afterwards, there was much moving about of mounts, so that Keerella now has the new one, coloured white of course. Unfortunately a quick test of the "Crying" skill, which is meant to make monsters in the area come in and attack, showed it to be very short-range, so not much use to gather dozens of Bandits or Elder Drakes or anything. Still, it looks impressive when done in town, heheh. Enchantrella's storm-coloured hatchling has gone across to Leo, just to be taken up a few levels - he started at just below level 15, is level 18 as my bedtime approaches, and hopefully will go up a bit more overnight. It's so restful to have a pet being levelled who only gets through about two quality stones an hour!

Damor, and her healer Itura, kindly invited me to join them in Egeha; once again Damor had got there early enough in Cariae-4 to get the best Boucu Demon spot, and when the double experience event started, slightly early at about ten to five, I went out to join them. I did die once, meaning that I am actually down one skill point on the day, but we didn't half kill a lot of demons, to the envy of other players who teleported in to see if the spot was available. One player, I think Damor said it was Superstar, was a bit naughty, and pulled the right-hand demon onto us while we were fighting the left-hand one, but we survived that. If you want to get a prime levelling spot during a double-experience event, you need to get there early, not turn up halfway through on the offchance...

Elvastar did come online as promised - he didn't join us in Egeha, but headed over to explore the new Dratan. Unfortunately he is suffering from kidney stones, so couldn't stay sitting up to use his computer for very long. He'll be off to hospital next Wednesday, apparently. And his laptop got attacked by viruses despite having Norton installed, so he hasn't been having a very good time of it lately.

General guild discussion was a bit more lively for a while, as you can imagine, and Damor has now discovered that I write a blog. Will she manage to track it down, I wonder? She levelled up to 71 now, and probably got through at least 75% of a level today, which at that level is excellent going. Helped by the double experience event of course, which was still going on when I logged out just before ten. I should mention that the player who plays Damor and Itura is actually a male student of chemistry, it's just the convention of this blog to use the gender of the actual in-game character, unless the character's name very firmly contradicts that, like Stanislav. I did see a titan in town today called Fifi, but luckily I have nothing to report about that character, lol.

Well, I started at level 39, and then moved up to 40, and was able to put on the gloves from my new armour set - and, later in the evening, moved up to 41, so that I could put on the shirt and skirt too; the skirt doesn't really "go" with the old black leather boots, as it is a more gauzy item, so I guess I need to keep going! 1711 pet points were gained, but the main figure to report, thanks to Damor's kindness, is the experience gain for the day: 175%!

Further Useful Progress - May 24th

Leo levelled Enchantrella's storm-coloured drake through the night and until late morning, so that he is now, conveniently, the same level as she is. After that, and a little bit of swapping around, including bringing the proceeds of MistressDomino's overnight sales across to Kee, Leo then took delivery of the level 4 red hatchling that my rogue had started fairly recently. I was slightly worried that I would have to use potions and Divine Shield, as a hatchling that young can't contribute much to a knight's armour rating, and I thought Elvastar had said that the pet had to be about level 11 before afk pet-levelling was possible, but good old Leo went and got a Treant, lured it back to the eyrie - and survived, so that by about ten in the evening the hatchling had gone up seven levels, and the pair of them (well, all three if you count the Treant) look ready for another overnight stint.

Keerella went out into the new Dratan to do a bit of exploring, and killed a few of the new level 39 deer, and then rode off further into the desert, past wafes and dragons and much more, feeling pretty safe on horseback, as monsters tend not to attack riders, and anyway you're out of range within seconds - and then suddenly I was slumping on the ground, dead. And my horse was dead too! It cost me 373,996 gold to "unseal" my horse so that I could use it again. Some parts of Dratan do look interesting, but I don't think I'll do any more solo exploring...

Luckily Damor came online, and I was able to hitch a lift to Egeha - she hadn't really meant to have a marathon session there today, but when she hitched her lift there, she found herself at our favourite Boucu Demon spot - and the person who'd used Recall was just leaving. Well, in circumstances like that, who could resist setting to? A couple of rogues from the guild she is in, Dominion, joined us, and I think I made about 20% experience before it was time for me to log out for food etc.

When I got back on, Damor and Itura were still there, so back I went, and after a little while we were joined by Rastatitan, who was hoping to level up, and used an experience-boosting Iris. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten that his parents were preparing a meal, so he had to leave the computer after about ten minutes. He was just high enough to team with Damor, unlike me, and she kindly suggested he sit on the hillside, within range, and got experience that way. That seemed to work - but Rasta did have a "red name", and some rogue teleporting in to check if the slot was available couldn't resist killing him. He was apparently still able to gain experience, but it must have been a bit of a surprise when he got back. Also in his Iris hour I think he got killed by a Demon - Damor has got me well-trained to mount my horse and use "pet return to village" when I see a Skin Walker rushing in too, or some other problem, so I survived...well, one death a day is quite enough! Anyway, Ras ended up only getting about 20% experience from his iris, and seemed to be having another problem as he was, soon after, wanting to contact a Game Master.

Damor made good progress, though not quite as much as she'd hoped; we agreed that we were both a bit too addicted to Last Chaos, but hey, it could be worse, it could be World of Warcraft! My feeling is that you can't really get beyond about level 25 unless you are addicted, and spend rather a large part of every day playing. I went up very nearly 60% in experience today, and got back that 1 skill point I lost yesterday, thanks to those deer. 1291 pet points helps things along, too. If the experience is a bit less than yesterday, well, there wasn't a double-experience event today... but there will be tomorrow!

I was trying to find the page of the Last Chaos website that the email newsletter links to, with its brief interview with the rather candid top mage on Hatzring, hints about the new kind of pet that's coming, and so on, but I couldn't find it from the website's front page. The forum was useful though - the "mystery" packages stand revealed if one goes into the Item Mall, goes to the "Packages" section, scrolls down to the bottom where they are listed, and clicks on each one's "details" button, which spills the beans nicely!

New Boots - May 25th

A busy day, with Leo hard at work levelling my rogue's drake, which has reached level 20 now. It would probably be higher, but the Treant got tired and vanished some time this evening, and I was too busy downstairs to check for some hours.

In the afternoon, unfortunately Damor wasn't able to get a good spot for the demons, and so joined an elite hunting party deep in Egeha, killing, I think, Dire Wraiths. However, as Itura wasn't needed there, she very kindly sent her over to the Dratan jail, Margaadum, to help me there. A bit earlier I'd had a quest to kill 25 Gnoll Soldiers, and teamed up with a knight while I was down in that part of Merac...we went on to the jail afterwards, and eventually found ourselves in a full 8-person party, with ambitions to go down to the third level there. We would probably have been okay if everyone had been at around our level, but too many of us, healers included, were below level 30, and might even have been too low to get experience, through being more than 15 levels below my 41. As you might expect, we got ambushed down there - I managed to bug out with about 30% health, I doubt if all the party were that lucky. But heck, at that level I'd not have dreamed of going anywhere near there, the Butchers would have been my target, back near to town. Going after high-level critters may get you experience, but you miss out on skill points, and at that sort of level, skill points are very important.

Anyway, I went back to the jail a little later with Itura, who, as with Damor, didn't stay in the party with me, just stayed locked on me and healed me - very useful, with the rather unfriendly canines there! We stayed on the ground level, so that I could run out easily and get horse buffs (mounts not being allowed indoors), then come back in. It worked well, though in the end Itura's laptop overheated and she had to log out. My drake took quite a lot of damage on both trips, it is definitely not a healthy place for pets.

I went to the quiz - well actually Kae went, as Damor had been asking if I had any healer armour. Itura was there, but Damor had luckily inherited our favourite Egeha spot from someone who was going to the quiz. Unfortunately I was so busy with my inventory and chat window open that I didn't notice the quiz starting, until I was suddenly rematerializing back in Randol!

So, I was free to change back to Kee, and Damor kindly Recalled me to join her. Escadalia joined us before long, too, and she and I partied together, ks'ing Damor as she killed the Boucu Demons. The double experience TeaTime event was still running, so things rolled along nicely. I did get killed once, I must remember that one can't jump on one's mount while still fighting, but on other occasions when a Skin Walker got attracted too, the old "get on horse" and "pet return to village" combination worked very well for all of us. As before, Damor kindly allowed us to pick up some of the cash the demons dropped, too.

Just before logging-out time Sheele came online, and chatted with us - confessing that it had been more boredom than a need to study that had kept her away so long. Let's hope the changes to Last Chaos, and re-encountering old friends, keeps her around this time, Norcaine surely needs her, especially as an Egeha party arranger and leader. There was some talk of trying to raise the guild to level six, which apparently means that Kae, as the current Guild Master, will need to scrape together 500 skill points... gold and some sort of small levy on members' experience gain is also involved. For that many skill points, a few guild parties, mobbing something appropriate, may be a good idea, if we can get enough people involved. There must be some critters of a suitable level in the new Dratan desert...

Anyway, I, that is to say Kee, levelled up - level 42 now! This meant I could put on the boots, and circlet, of my new armour, which is good, as the old leather boots did rather clash with the gauzy purple skirt. I never did find the circlet for the previous set, so it's good to have a complete five-part set again... though I really need to get a new staff...if I can find one. Too many mages looking for too few weapons, apparently, but at least I got lucky with finding the armour set. And the day's experience rise was 86%, about ten times what I'd have managed without Damor; 1356 pet points got added, and even, thanks to the jail trips, 29 skill points.

Progress - May 26th

Poor Leo had a disturbed night. When I woke and checked up on him at about 3:00am, there was no Treant - even though Leo was right up on the edge of the map, someone had actually come all the way up, and killed the Treant! I suspect "GRANDKNIGHT" as he has said "Hi" and "Party?" as recorded in the text box, but weird behaviour, you'd think if he was high enough level to be able to kill a Treant, he'd know that pet levellers tend to be "away from keyboard" and don't want their sparring partners killed. And then this morning I found the game had later closed with an "insufficient memory" error, something one does tend to get after a day or two of continuous play. Still, Leo has continued his good work, and in the morning the drake reached level 23. The decision to make was, do we stop at about level 23 with a suitable-level drake pet for my rogue, or do we continue and make a mounted dragon? I decided that my rogue's need for a pet to give an armour (or attack) buff takes precedence this time. After some general swapping around of stuff between characters, the suitably-buffed drake was handed back to my rogue, and then Barbarienne passed her pony, currently halfway through level 10, over to Leo to be levelled up a bit. While my other main characters have a mount and a drake, it looks as if she'll have a pony to go with her mount.

Yesterday I was looking at my Aeria Points recharge history, and not only have I received a couple of 50 point additions for voting in the online poll on the LC home page, but twice I have got 300 points for "newbie classes" or "LC newbie classes"... I have attended the classes held by Airadella a couple of times with suitably low level characters, and learnt a few things I didn't know, but I didn't realise that one got bonus ap for doing so! Airadella usually hands out a few bits of "Cake" or "Watermelon" afterwards, I assumed that was the only incentive.

In the afternoon Kee went and fought a few Gnoll Soldiers, and then headed for the Jail again, which luckily was less busy than last time, so that it was possible to stay by the doorway into the first room, and pick off the canines from there, so that my poor drake took very little damage. After a while Psykore came on the guild channel to ask if anyone was interested in a trip to Egeha to fight demons, to which I responded in the affirmative, and once I'd made sure that the party was about ready for action, moved over to the Cariae-6 server. I joined the party, but had a disconnection while I was still in town, which ought to have warned me that I was having problems... after logging back in I got Recalled to the spot, a valley with some Boucu Demons, and as usual some Skin Walkers close by too, and before too long the first demon was attacked. Unfortunately, at that point I was lagging out, so although I had right-clicked on the demon, and clicked on Terra Spear to join the attack, nothing happened, and as far as everyone else was concerned I just stood there like a lemon. I saw the action, I read the "Kee, what are you doing?" text, but my replies didn't show. I even had a message from Damor, but any response I typed in just vanished unseen. It was perhaps unfortunate that not only did I get a share of the experience, I was also the team member who got the loot allocated to them... the level 71 rogue "quickbirdrun pants +1". I reconnected, but my text messages, such as the apologies to Psykore, were slow appearing, indicating continuing lag, so it didn't seem a good idea to go back to them. I'm not sure that a party without any healing is wildly sensible out there anyway.

After taking a slightly early food break, I briefly went back to Egeha, but to the regular Boucu Demon spot, as Damor had asked to see what the Vanishing mage costume was like. It was Enchantrella who went, since she carries that around as the next costume she will be able to wear - Damor seemed more impressed with her current outfit, the Dark set, especially the skirt - what there is of it. Not many level 23 mages visit Egeha! I tried a few crafty hits at their current demon, but not unreasonably they all missed, and I didn't get any experience. Damor was actually partied with someone I didn't know, and Captianjack and one or two other people were also there, so there was no space for Kee to go back and ks then, unfortunately. It wasn't Damor who "had" the spot, it was only borrowed, apparently.

So, it was back to the jail, to try to make some use of the "double experience, double skill exp" event, which unfortunately started a bit late by European standards, at 8:00pm UK time - I even got a conveniently-timed quest to get the hides of five of the Spiked Canines, which took a while to get, but offered some useful experience, and five moonstones. Damor, since she couldn't find anywhere in Egeha with the double-double event approaching, even came along to help, luring large numbers of the canines for me to whack - and then, after I briefly returned to town to claim my reward, when I got back she'd rounded up a whole herd of Salamander Ruins, which she had outside the jail. They yielded pretty good experience for me, as I pulled one away at a time - I did manage to attract three at one point, but could easily teleport back into the jail to throw them off my scent.

Damor logged out, though I did catch a brief glimpse of her in Randol last thing, and I went back to the Merac Jail; the first room in there is a bit tricky, as there can sometimes be three or four other people there, and only a limited supply of Spiked Canines and the more aggressive Dire Spiked Canines, leading to the same poor little doggie being attacked by more than one person. And then people come running back from the lower levels, followed by a dozen or so of the beasts, plus the two-headed variety - when the people teleport out at the far end, that leaves the canines behind, so they start edging back the way they came - which can be a bit overwhelming, I'm sure I heard a player death-cry or two. It's awkward having to teleport outside before one can renew horse buffs, especially if the different area takes a while to load.

Still, for an (almost) Egeha-free day a 12% rise in experience wasn't bad - the extra experience etc didn't tempt me to stay up late. Only 407 pet points, since for almost all the time in the Jail I didn't have my drake equipped, since it's so easy for a pet to die there, but 56 skill points. At level 42 I've finally got enough attribute points in Intelligence to be able to get the spell Fame Field, and I've now got four out of its five levels. The fifth one, unfortunately, needs 194 skill points, so some more skill exp farming will be needed if I'm to max it out.

A Shorter Day - May 27th

Leo was busy through the night safely, but finally lost his Treant in the early afternoon - no foul play is suspected, if someone had come up and killed it I'd have got part of the experience from the kill, and there was nothing like that, it just lost interest and wandered off back to its friends and family. As the game was starting to get laggy, and I do end up getting error messages if the game runs for days and days, I closed Last Chaos down on the upstairs computer, then restarted and did a little stock-moving across from Kee to MistressDomino before setting Leo up again. The horse had reached level 19 by then, so it was almost high enough to give back to Barbarienne as her pet, but a few more hours seemed like a good idea.

Kee had logged on as usual after lunch, and managed to find her next set of armour, the level 50/52 mage set, made up of Shenimas gloves and boots, Bluses shirt and skirt, and Maerys circlet - it cost 30 million in gold, which is slightly towards the high end of the scale (more what Damor would sell at than buy at, she commented), but it is all +6. A bit later I even found a level 45 Mehtatolon Staff, but it isn't plussed at all (which is why it only cost 250,000 gold), so would need a bit of work done to its normal 178 magic attack before is overtakes my +9 Hatties Staff, which does 150, plus 103...and thus is, what, about the equivalent of a Mehtatolon Staff +6 or +7? The 50/52 mage outfit is a bit of a backward step, fashion-wise, to the old "black leather and boots" look, after the current 45/47 Asuquted costume's more gauzy effect, to my surprise.

Damor let me know that she had got access to our favourite Boucu Demon spot, starting in about half an hour - and the double experience and double skill exp event was still running, or had been restarted. While I waited, after the shopping I had time for one foray into the Merac Jail, and then moved over to Cariae-5, and joined Damor's party, to be Recalled to Egeha.

Unfortunately I found Cariae-5 rather laggy, and lost my connection a time or two - the second time I logged back in, Damor had decided to give up the spot and go and do something in real life for a change, since the double-double had at last ended. Sheele had just logged in, though, and with a little encouragement was persuaded to take over the slot, joined by me and Zeratus from Norcaine, and Sirstabalot and FallenSaintz. Damor stayed long enough to make sure we were able to do the job properly, reminding me to use Sloth at the start of the attack, and giving me some of the ten-minute Effort Scrolls; I was still lagging occasionally, with spells or text sometimes taking a long time to appear, but otherwise we worked pretty well, although we didn't have a healer. And then, just as the second ten-minute scroll was ending, one of the Boucu Demons, well, maybe a rogue's Snare attack didn't work, but although I think I just about managed to cast Sloth, I had a very bad bit of lag. As far as I was concerned I logged out with about 400 health, but looking at my experience level afterwards, it seems pretty certain that I did get killed. I then got disconnected twice in Randol in quick succession, so regretfully had to give up on the idea of returning to Cariae-5 Egeha, and headed for Cariae-3 instead, where I didn't find any lag or disconnection problems...

Anyway, all told I did end up over 20% experience ahead - and the owner of some quite good Green Stone magical accessories, which Damor discarded to give herself some inventory room. Oh, and 25 of Merchant Geres's Combination Boxes, Damor does like to buy such things in bulk! I did level up, too, reaching level 43. There wasn't really all that much more to the day, as I had to log out early, as I usually do have to on Tuesdays. Another brief trip to Merac Jail, recruiting Saton, a level 32 sorcerer (a new character for Strokez), by the arena in Randol in Cariae-2, and some guild chat...and that was about it. Thanks to those trips to Egeha, and those two ten-minute scrolls, I did go up by 21% in experience despite the lag-death, while my brief trips to Merac jail were worth 5 skill points. I even managed 234 pet points, somewhere along the line.

One of Those Days - May 28th

One of those days with way too many disconnections - and sometimes a few "time out" messages before one could even log in. Running out to fight stuff, and finding that the second critter one attacked just wouldn't die, followed by the "disconnected" message, just isn't fun. I logged in my rogue, and left the game to load, only to find that, just standing in the middle of Randol, she was already disconnected. Lucky I wasn't trying to level a pet then!

The new week's event, confusingly dated in the in-game instructions as ending yesterday, involves picking up extra drops of red carnations (which as a drop aren't actually named) and, for lower levels, yellow forsythia. The Guild Master and her advisers can take the red carnations to the Domain Merchant, and exchange them for a guild point... 100 of the points can be exchanged for a sort of coupon apparently, which gives a prize such as a "Summon Baal" scroll, but if Norcaine is going to expand, we need to get thousands of guild points. Once we get to guild level six, for which Kae will need to get 500 skill points, 6000 guild points would get us our own in-game guild message board, while 2000 points would allow us to recruit an extra five members...so I hope that guild members will collect the carnations and hand them over to Kae or Kee, so that they can be "banked".

The Yellow Forsythia were advertised as allowing a character of level 24 or below to upgrade an item of armour or a weapon (providing that it was of that character's type) by +3, but that was completely misleading. In fact, if you collect enough of them, perhaps 15 (though the numbers required are obscured by the lettering), you are just able to obtain a low-level item which is already +3...so rather less exciting than the possibility to upgrade a higher-level item you already have, maybe from +3 to +6!

As usual, the Item Mall had some new goodies this morning - and as usual, the Americans who log in straight after the servers go up again after their maintenance downtime had bagged all the limited-number bargains. So, yet another annoyance, sigh... Lucky smelting stones for 79 aeria points would have been a nice bargain, even the second tranche at 99 ap are pretty cheap, but they only have the 149 ap ones left now. Similarly Heaven Stones at 99 ap vanished before breakfast, while only ones at 149 ap remain, though I think HS are overpriced in the mall anyway, since they do drop in-game, and usually sell for around 625,000 gold now. You could buy items in the mall for 100 ap that you could sell for rather more than that...

The afternoon was no better, connection-wise. Leo managed to acquire another level 10 pony, which had been in the possession of my own low-level knight, but got disconnected just as he was luring his chosen Treant towards the eyrie, and a minor character or two couldn't even kill ten jaguars before getting dumped back to the desktop. Kee signed in briefly to alert the Norcaine people who were on about the uses of red carnations, but after a couple of minutes, first her text got entered after a lag-delay, and then not at all. Hello desktop! Why Last Chaos can't just return one to the log-in screen I don't know, like any sensible game, rather than close completely. It would be even better if it didn't drop the connection in the first place, of course.

Luckily, in the evening the connection finally sorted itself out, so Leo was able to start training his pony, which soon began levelling up. I mentioned on the guild channel that Leo would be available to give any guild member's pet a bit of a boost, if they have a pet which is a bit too low to give them as much of a buff as they'd like. He might even take it all the way to level 31 or so, but a contribution to the number of quality stones etc needed for that would be appreciated! At some point I'd like him to level up Kee's drake a bit, as it's only level 36, seven levels behind her, and not getting any points from the fighting in Maargadum Jail, but that will take a lot of stones, and some pretty frequent running up and down stairs to keep an eye on the starvation bar.

Well, Kee did some fighting in the aforementioned Jail in Merac, but I must confess that I was finding it very boring - buffing up, going in, killing Dire Spike Canines until the buffs wear off, then dashing out again, regenerating, and repeating. It's surprising how much damage those canines do, even with Kee's horse buffs and good close-range evasion. I managed over 3%, and then sent Kae in for a change, but only lasted for under 1% then. Kee got no pet points at all of course, those canines eat pets alive if you equip them in there, but did manage to gain 20 skill points. I also picked up 22 red carnations, anyway, which have been handed in to the Domain Merchant, so that's a start... 7978 guild points to go!

A Productive Day - May 29th

The overnight "afk" work didn't go too well - Upstairs, Leo "encountered a problem" and "had to close", while downstairs MistressDomino's attempts to sell her usual wide range of fine bargains (it says here) was rudely interrupted by a Microsoft security update, which arrogantly decided that it needed to restart the computer without asking first. Still, Leo had got the current pony up two levels before his close-down, and the pony became a horse (level 16) just after breakfast. MistressDomino had managed to take in 3,866,400 in gold, but most of that was from selling four Golden Magnifying Glasses at 900,000 each. But logging in to check on that, I encountered JustCindy, who wanted to sell 185 moonstones at only 10,000 each, so there ought to be a good profit on that deal.

As the Yellow Forsythias only drop for characters below level 24, I think, there is an incentive to play one's lower-level characters, so that is what I was doing for most of the afternoon. Barbarienne fought the Great Horn Beasts and the Drakes, while my level 10 knight, SirDarth, obtained enough Jaguar teeth to allow Merchant Geres to make a couple more of his famous necklaces. I must transfer some herbs to him, his poor hatchling is down to 11 health, the Jaguars seem to hurt him even when SirDarth does the attacking. The idea is, tentatively, to get him into the Guardian scheme on Saturday, with Keerella as his Guardian... this week's "Family" special events include some sort of extra bonus for successful padawans that begin their apprenticeship before the next server maintenance. So, I'll have ten days to get him to level 20. I don't want to start on Friday as I probably will only be able to play in the evening tomorrow.

Damor was asking if I could get her one of this week's special Item Mall offers, the "2fer" special offer on the Rune of Protection II - 599 aeria points for the two runes, which may seem expensive but is less than the usual cost of a single rune. She had managed to find me a level 45 Mehtatolon Staff +6, so we exchanged that (plus a lower level +6 wand she'd already passed over to me to try to sell, but which may one day be useful to Enchantrella) for the runes, and she attempted to buff up her top-level staff. All did not go well though, and it reverted to +10 (the runes only stop the item from breaking, they don't stop it losing a level or two), so I handed over another "2fer" in exchange for some cash and some other minor items I'd been intending to sell for her. Browsing around I saw a level 49 mage staff, +6, for 10 million and was very tempted, but Damor assured me that it was overpriced, and that I shouldn't buy it.

By then though Damor had moved to Egeha, so to get my gold I crossed to Cariae-5, registered for a party, accepted the invitation to join Damor's party, and accepted the "Recall" to join her - the usual deal. And once I was there, and could see that she had got our favourite Demon-bashing spot, well, I volunteered to stick around and, er, "help", heheh! Sheele joined us too for a while; knowing a good thing when I saw it, I didn't log out for my usual leisurely tea, but just made a quick sandwich and ate it at the keyboard. I think in all we were there for very nearly four hours, during which I went up by approximately 40%. I only died once, when I was too busy typing an explanation of a slightly cryptic remark I'd made to notice that there was a problem - on a couple of other dodgy occasions, I managed the old "mount up and return to village" deal, by the skin of my teeth. The second of those occasions rather puzzled me at the time, We were fighting the left-hand Boucu Demon when another of them came into sight, running down the road at full speed straight for us! I only just got out of there in time, materialising in the Egeha village with around 400 health. Damor explained to me afterwards that it was a rogue using Invisibility who had pulled the Boucu Demon onto us - very sneaky, a way of killing without your name going red, which would work even in a non-PvP server. A bit like the idiot who lured the Elder Drakes to where the pet levellers were a week or so back.

We finally yielded the spot to some of Damor's Dominion guildmates; I didn't leave any too soon, as most of them seemed to arrive in the village seconds after I left. I do remember one of them saying, as they attacked the Boucu Demon, "Oops forgot the buffs", come to think of it! Zeratus had asked earlier if I had any of the Golden Magnifying Glasses left, so I sold him one at the Special Guildie Price of 800k, and then, after a quick look around the shops, headed out to Merac's Maargadum Jail to fight the Dire Spike Canines... slightly handicapped by the fact that I'd bought 43 relatively cheap ToolAids, so was 29.04% overweight, and thus with reduced dexterity. There was a mage called GiGi there for a short time, running around in either a very early mage costume or her underwear, and dying approximately once every ten seconds. Either she's very eccentric, or below the level when dying incurs a death penalty - or perhaps it's not her character, and she was arranging a surprise for a friend...?

Anyway, it is good to be able to report a 41% advance on the experience front; 6 more skill points, despite the almost complete absence of skill experience in Egeha when you're fighting monsters 41 levels above you, isn't bad either, while 912 pet points is a step in the right direction too. That doesn't include the many thousands of pet points that Leo's current horse has gained today of course; at the time of typing he is well into level 20, and hopefully will add another level or two overnight...if there aren't any more Microsoft urgent updates, that is...

A Day of Two Parts - May 30th

I do like to see the top half of the on-screen text box saying "Your pet leveled up" five times - and so it was this morning, with Leo's current horse reaching level 23. That's Leo's last all-night session for a while, as when his horse reaches level 24 the speed at which he gets through the starvation bar doubles, so that it lasts four hours instead of eight. However, the curse of 11:30 struck again - that's 3:30am for the US East Coast, a fairly quiet time, but it was annoying to get Leo disconnected, and Barbarienne also who was farming some green herbs. At least it gave a chance for Kee to pass those 43 ToolAids over to MistressDomino, but it was 40 minutes before normal business could be resumed.

I managed to get on Last Chaos to actually play just in time for the "teatime" event, which was double experience today. It started half an hour late, but went on for an extra half hour. Damor had managed to get her favourite spot to fight Boucu Demons in Cariae-5, so I swiftly volunteered to join her, and we slogged away - I think we only had to make a quick escape to the village once, and I got there with 300 health remaining. By the end of the double experience, I'd gone up almost exactly 75%, getting me comfortably into level 44. It's very kind of Damor to help me along like this, it's a difficult stage to go through...once I get a level 49 staff, suitably enhanced, it will be time to join full Demon-hunting parties...

When the double experience ended, the GMs announced that we were switching to double skill exp until the US teatime four hours later, so it was time to go and do a bit of skill point farming. And that too is something I don't find comfortable to solo at this level - the early rooms of Maargadum Jail are not easy, and the Dire Spike Canines don't give a huge amount of skill exp, while they take a while to kill, and tend to come in in twos and threes. And then people run back from the lower levels, bringing a dozen or more of the aggressive Dire Spike Canines, and the Two Headed Canines as well, into the room, before vanishing via the teleporter, so the canines then attack anyone else who's around. And sometimes the game crashes when I try to leave, which I need to do every time the horse buffs wear off, and loading the Dread Garden, and loading the Jail again, can be slow too... Oh, and the place is crowded, so that people ks by accident, so that someone is often saying "don't ks", and gets replied to that he's ks-ing too. And pets get attacked, and people die. In short, not my favourite place to solo!

Zeratus kindly rode down to the Jail to pass over the 54 red carnations, or " ", he had collected - that brings the total currently in Kee's inventory to 80, but there must be some on other characters, and hopefully other guild people are saving them up. Zeratus was saying he might not be on for a couple of days, except perhaps very briefly, so he thought it was a good idea to hand over his stock now.

Well, the total experience gain for the day, almost entirely from ks-ing Damor in Egeha, was 76%; I got another 820 pet points there, which may not seem a huge amount, but I do tend to miss when I am attempting to hit Boucu Demons, about two-thirds of the time. 20 skill points, though, shows that me soloing the Jail just isn't really working. Still, Leo got his current horse up to level 26 just before his logging-off time, which was an upbeat way to end the day.

Disconnected - May 31st

Another day with absolutely lousy connectivity. "Disconnected", "Cannot Contact Server", "Timed Out", "Send Error Report?" - they all came up with monotonous regularity. It was a struggle to get one new character through the starting "personal dungeon" sequence, it took three or four attempts and even then the game had to be restarted before she could arrive in Randol. It's a good time to make a new character though, as far as I could see every Fox she killed outside Randol before reaching level four dropped a Yellow Forsythia box. In my case that was 34 of them, though it would have been more if some parts of the personal dungeon hadn't been gone through three or four times.

If I'd known that things were going to be so bad I'd have held off on registering SirDarth as Keerella's apprentice, but that was the first thing I did today - Kee was a guardian once before, but after a while it looks as if that status, and the constant flood of messages about new players arriving in Randol, automatically concludes. So SirDarth has ten days to get up to level 20, if he wants a special weapon as a reward.

I was wondering if, as skill exp is rather easier to get at low levels, certainly the foxes and wolves seemed to be giving masses of it for very little ordinary experience, so maybe SirDarth, or a junior mage, should be the one to grind through 500 skill points, and then be temporarily appointed Guild Master of Norcaine to get us from level 5 to level 6, where the benefits of being a guild do finally start to become apparent...but on further investigation, I think with the purchase of a "reset special skills" card Enchantrella is the character to call on. It would be easy to take some points away from her processing skills, in fact we could probably do it right now - except that the guild master has to be at least level 30. So, some more general work to do there, but I think it is the simplest way.

One thing I'd not known was that if there's a disconnection, it is best to ignore the "Disconnected" window, and use "Z" to bring up the normal "log out" window, and, well, log out - that usually avoids having to load up the game again from scratch, though there does seem to be a risk of the old "Send Error Message?" along the way. You will probably find that the "account is already logged in" when you first re-enter the password, but the second time should work.

There was a special "Upgrade Event" from 7:00 to 8:30pm UK time, with an increased chance of an upgrade to armour or weapons using a Heaven Stone being successful. Unfortunately I don't have a level 49 staff, but I did manage to buy a level 53 Darkwhite Staff earlier, and using Heaven Stones, Lucky Smelting Stones, and after +6 Heaven Stones again with a Rune of Protection I (from the "2fer" special offer in the Item Mall) managed to get it up to +10 - which is quite enough I hope, unless I decide to add a foolproof but expensive Extreme Stone to take it up to +11. I also got a bit carried away and upgraded my current Mehtatolon Staff from +7 to +10. I tried to upgrade a piece of armour too, as I had one rune left over, but I lagged out while doing it, so it failed without even the usual failure message. I'd taken 20 HS out of storage, and rather than put my leftover 5 back, sold them at the unusually high price of 750,000 gold, as they were in rather high demand from people wanting to do an upgrade. I let Captianjack have one for 200k less, though. But my supply of aeria points took a bit of a beating, buying packs of the "2fers"...which I suppose was the general idea behind the event.

Strangely, while Kee continued to get very quick disconnections in Randol, SirDarth finally settled down, and was able to fight the Jaguars, to get those teeth so that Geres can make some more necklaces, without further problems - though earlier it had taken about three reconnections per necklace. SirDarth was soon able to move over to the level 12 Sasquatches, and the level 13 Werewolves, and worked steadily, so that by my logging-out time he was a quarter of the way into level 13 himself. And his hatchling has reached level 6, so is starting to give a useful armour boost. For some reason at around 9:30 an unannounced period of double skill exp began, I just noticed that the amount I was getting per Sasquatch had doubled, so I probably stayed fighting a little longer than I would have otherwise.

Well, no fighting to report for Kee today, and no pet levelling for Leo, but at least we have transferred some items over to the new character, which is what she is designed for, making a bit of room in Darth's and Kee's inventories, and Darth is making useful progress... while Kee's upgraded staffs should prove useful. Darth has a good supply of the Yellow Forsythias now, I must get his next armour set sorted out, using the flowers, before this week's special arrangements come to an end.

Kaerella's Blog - stardate May 2008 (2)

Unbloggishly, here we read from the top down - so the month continues here from the top!

With Frenzies Like These - May 17th

Leo's horse is level 32 now, so he gets hungry rather quickly - a 10-level difference between pet and owner means it just takes 83 minutes to go from 100 to 0 on the starvation bar. Still, Leo has kept busy all day, while Enchantrella did plenty of mining this morning, and even had a quick canter over to the Great Horn Beasts to gain a skill point or two after lunch. Just to keep the Elva account active I took his archer out for half an hour to the Bandits and Berserkers, before Kee had her turn - going just around the corner from there to the Blood Frenzies.

I only had the briefest of chats with Damor, who has reached the dizzy heights of level 70 now. With any luck I'll be allowed to go to Egeha to steal a small proportion of the experience she gets from killing the Boucu Demons before too long, but at the moment my priority is to get together the 205 skill points I need for level five of Robe Mastery. Once I have that, well, levelling up a few times will be the aim, as I can't start to learn the other two level 38 skills until I have enough attribute points (the points one can put in strength, dexterity, intelligence or constitution) for them. Flame Field needs 35 in intelligence, not counting bonus points from accessories and armour (I currently have 25), while Fear needs 17 in dexterity (I currently have 12, plus a fair number more from the accessories that I've got equipped). That should be a fun skill, it makes the monster run away for a short period of time! The advice I have is to boost the intelligence first, all the way up to level 46, when I should put 1 point in dexterity - for levels 47 to 56 all the points should go to dexterity, before switching back to intelligence again so that 100 intelligence comes up at level 70, when there is a skill that needs that amount.

Well the Blood Frenzies behaved much as they usually do, though I managed to avoid any of them attacking my drake. Things got a little crowded at times, there seemed to be other people farming them coming in on my patch from three different directions, so that often the one I was going to attack next got pulled away by someone else at the last moment. The drops were nothing special - except for the three Heaven Stones, that is! Since I'm a level higher than the BFs now they don't give a huge amount of experience, it's just that they die rather more quickly than Gnoll Lancers. An 11% rise in experience is I suppose pretty good at this sort of level; 2023 pet points isn't bad either, and 61 skill points moves me along usefully towards that Robe Mastery target. Since I'm out during the day tomorrow, I probably won't get on to Last Chaos until the evening, round about Quiz time or a little later - I'll miss at least the first two hours of the regular Sunday event, which will probably be double skill points again, I hope that it goes on for the rest of the evening. I may well give Leo the day off entirely, he has been working very hard recently.

A Late Start - May 18th

It was about 7:00pm UK time when I logged in; as the Sunday event was going on, Kee dashed straight for Merac and the Blood Frenzies, and luckily the event, which was indeed double skill exp, carried on until my log-out time of approaching ten o'clock. The fighting was straightforward enough, though again I was squeezed a bit later on by other BF-fighters on either side.

Just as I was about to log off Zeratus was asking if someone in the guild could buy him some Mana Stealer Potions - these cost 99 aeria points in the Item Mall, but last an hour, and would make his farming rather more productive as he'd not have to sit down and take "mana breaks" between fights... so, useful for someone who doesn't have high natural mana regeneration, especially when an event is on. Angel of Lyght wasn't able to help, which just left me. I tend to translate ap into gold by starting from the fact that pet colouring crystals cost 199 ap and go for approaching two million in gold, and Zeratus seemed happy enough with the idea of paying a million each. When I realised he wanted more than one, I remembered that I did have a pack of five of these in my "records" section of the Item Mall, where I keep stuff that isn't yet needed by any particular character - and I'd bought it at a sale price, apparently, though I have no idea what that price was. So I transferred the whole pack to Zeratus...I suggested 3 million would be quite enough, but he was so happy that he traded me 3.5 million.

After that minor departure from routine, which at least gave me something to write about, I transferred my recently acquired loot across to MistressDomino, who'd just been standing in Randol in a "solo party" with me, and logged out. MistressDomino will be selling items overnight, so fingers crossed that she does well, and even manages to sell some Large Attack Potions this time. A quick check reveals that she has made her first sale, two Heaven Stones at 625,000 each, so that's a good beginning...

The experience gain for the evening was a little under 7%, plus 1445 pet points, and, thanks to the doubling nature of the Event, 99 skill points, which brings that final level of Robe Mastery within reach tomorrow, with any luck.

Robes Mastered - May 19th

After his day off, Leo returned to his horse-training duties enthusiastically - the horse reached level 33 fairly early in the morning, and level 34 by mid-evening! His day was not without incident, though, as when he'd tempted the Treant up to the eyrie, he found another knight, MrMagoo, there, with his own Treant. Leo moved along to the far end, and set to work, but later I found that the two Treants had come close together, taking both knights with them - and later still, somehow both knights had switched to fighting the same Treant, which, after a while, had died. We both got some experience from that death, not something a pet levelling knight wants too much of, though Leo is only 2% of the way into level 22 so it doesn't matter for him.

MrMagoo's horse can't be particularly high level, as the player doesn't seem to need to check up very often - he's probably asleep or at work I guess. Unfortunately MrMagoo has spent quite a few hours just standing right on the outside edge of the world, being attacked by that remaining Treant, but not attacking it, and thus not getting any pet points. When that Treant decided that Leo was not its main target, I went off and lured back a new Treant, and am trying to keep it well clear of the other one. Except for yesterday, Leo has been pet-training every day there, and this is the first time another knight has chosen precisely the same spot, though others have been seen further along, or just at ground level...though there they run the risk of somebody coming along and "helping" them by killing their adversary, or even bringing in a few Elder Drakes to kill them and their pet.

MistressDomino did some selling overnight in Randol, on the Cariae-3 sub-server as usual; it seems to me that some items seem to be rising in price. It's difficult now to find Item Drop Boosters at 120,000, which for a while seems to have been the standard price; ToolAids seem still to be at around 20-22,000, but Moonstones, well, almost every merchant who is advertising having them in stock has sold out, so the ones MistressDomino sold last night at 24,500 gold probably went rather quickly. I've always thought of Heaven Stones as being not much over 500,000 each, but it looks as if they are significantly more expensive now, with 625,000 qualifying as "priced to sell". Which makes it even nicer when a Blood Frenzy drops one, of course. Oh, Mistress D even managed to sell a few of her supply of Large Attack Potions last night, the effect of last week's Item Mall sale price must be wearing off.

Enchantrella did plenty of mining, and collected 22 quality stones, 41 imperfect stones, and 76 flawed stones. But by mid-afternoon Kee was ready to go into action, and was able before food time to get the final 22 skill points I needed to get the top level of Robe Mastery. So for a while the priority is going to be experience rather than skill points. Kee needs to get some more attribute points, and that means getting more levels...

Unfortunately Damor wasn't around very much today, so there wasn't an opportunity to hitch a lift to Egeha and join her for some Boucu Demon bashing. I guess I can still farm for skill points, and put them safely away in a "special skill" like armoursmithing, but it looks as if Kee has reached a bit of a plateau now. Just over 6% experience gain today shows how flat things will be, against regular foes, but 1301 pet points isn't bad - and 45 skill points isn't too bad a score either, given the hours involved. Oh, there was a little action with Kaerella too - but this was the level 8 healer over on the new Hatzring server, so it was back to collecting Jaguar teeth so that Merchant Geres could make some more of her necklaces. It's interesting to see the prices people charge over there - most items, other than ones the NPCs sell, seem to be quite a lot cheaper there, presumably because there isn't anything like as much money in circulation.

Rather Limited Time - May 20th

Leo has kept busy, and his pet horse has now safely reached level 35, which means it takes little over an hour for the poor animal to starve - he was down to 16 points on one occasion when I finally remembered to check up. MrMagoo was up there too again, but we kept far enough apart to avoid problems, and he left later in the day. The Treants have behaved themselves, the only problem I had was once I tried to adjust the view rather quickly, which brought up the "send error message?" window. So the game had to be restarted, and Leo had to teleport back, and lure a new Treant up to the eyrie. That didn't take too long, so by the end of the day the horse was around a third of the way through his new level. The number of points needed per level does start to stretch out a bit in the mid-thirties, but the target is to get this horse up to level 38, if I can. Enchantrella, out mining again, managed to get that same error message a little later, again from a sudden change in the viewing angle. Oh well, it allowed me to do some stuff on this computer that can be a bit prone to slowdowns if I have Last Chaos running at the same time.

Poor Keerella did spend some time shopping around this afternoon, but got nothing to show for it except a few Pan Flutes and Drake Eggs bought slightly cheaply at 12,000 gold, which hopefully MistressDomino will be able to sell at 17,500 one night soon. Moonstones continue to be in short supply, I only noticed a couple of people selling them at 25,000, I suspect they didn't last long. Kee actually got a couple of disconnections - if you click on someone to look at what they are selling, and the merchant window doesn't come up at once, you know some lag is involved, and you are stuck there until either the merchant window finally opens, or the disconnection window appears.

My level 23 rogue borrowed the Pierce of Wind, and headed off to fight Butchers for about an hour which, as they give her around .16% experience each, gave a significant boost. They aren't too good at giving skill exp, though, generally one needs to fight critters nearer one's own level for that. With the improved evasion, and horse buffs, she didn't take any damage - but I don't think the Butchers, and the occasional Pilferer, dropped anything better than a ToolAid.

Kee fared better when I managed to just squeeze in about 25 minutes against the Blood Frenzies - they dropped a Heaven Stone, which at current prices has to be worth at least 625,000. It was only a brief session, so a little over 1% experience was all I got, and 247 pet points - and 8 skill points. Not a lot compared to Zeratus, who was saying that he managed to get 140 skill points in an hour, towards the number he needs for the level 50 skills. Of course he was using one of those Mana Stealer Potions, and a skill point booster that cost him 3.5 million as well. Mundo, who had recently returned to the Norcaine guild, has left again; apparently Rastatitan arranged it specially, to help him to level up in a guild that goes to Egeha a lot. All clever stuff...

A Bad Day - May 21st

As Leo was leading his Treant back down from the eyrie last night just before logging off, I saw MrMagoo - and he was lying dead on the ground. I hope that wasn't anything to do with the Treant that was liberated when I got the "send error report?" closure earlier, I suppose it might have headed back that way and given MrMagoo two Treants to fight, but I hadn't seen any sign of that when I returned.

Well, the new "Mystery" themed week has begun, after the server downtime and a new minor patch - and it has been a terrible day. I kept on losing my connection! Leo usually doesn't suffer from disconnections, as he is only automatically fighting his Treant there is no huge flow of information needed - but after the initial set-up went okay, a while later when I checked he was disconnected, and I've run him back out there, only to get the disconnection window almost immediately he arrives, too many times. One recent attempt had him fighting for about ten minutes before the disconnection came, which was better than most - the horse should have reached level 36 this afternoon, but is still on level 35.

Damor suggested switching the router off and back on again, but that didn't seem to make any difference. Kee was doing some shopping around in town, and got disconnections before and after that. Damor did talk about a trip to Egeha, but really, with the unreliable connection it wouldn't have been much use.

Keerella did manage to get to the Berserkers at her second attempt, the first one ending with a sudden absence of monsters as she rode forward. She only stayed connected for about 20 minutes, though, so a Moonstone was the only useful bit of loot she received. I'd remarked on the guild channel earlier that there seemed to be more Heaven Stones than Moonstones available to buy, it is rather strange how uncommon they seem to have become lately.

Mining for stones is something that is very vulnerable to disconnections - but perhaps it is significant that, while Leo has had disconnections, my level 8 healer over in the new Hatzring server was able to mine away without any problems. So my activities may need to switch, at least temporarily, to there, if things don't improve. It was interesting to find out that the areas that are so laggy in Juno in the old server seem exactly the same there...

Part of the new "Mystery" theme are some packages in the Item Mall with undisclosed contents, I hope that the Wet Paint Wiki gives listings soon, though one with "Item Drop Boosters, Golden Magnifying Glasses, Spell Books of Luck, and a Party Recall Scroll" is perhaps less than entirely mysterious. And, as usual with packages, it is half the ap cost of the individual items, so it may be worth investing in. The Last Chaos website also says that "This weekend we will be having Mystery events, including the awesome mystery experience event where we will be raising experience on all servers by an undisclosed amount, beginning on Saturday and ending in Memorial Day's double experience extravaganza!" So it looks as if Britain's Bank Holiday Monday coincides with an American day off, which is useful.

A later trip to the Blood Frenzies did last a bit longer, but that got a bit laggy too, perhaps because a large anti-virus patch was being downloaded, and there were some almost-disconnections, with nothing happening for 30 seconds or so after targetting a Blood Frenzy, or my poor drake unable to pick up the loot for a while. I'm surprised that in the end Kee was up as much as 3.5% on the day! 938 pet points takes my drake pretty close to his next level, while in the circumstances 33 skill points isn't bad. I still need another 23 before I can "bank" them in Advanced Armoursmith level 3; it's lucky that crafting skills only have three levels per type, after that one moves on to the final three levels, which are Expert Armoursmith, and need 452 skill points between them.

A Good Start - May 22nd

The connection seemed fully recovered this morning, I'm happy to report - indeed, Leo's final stint last night was uninterrupted, until the time came to switch off. This morning his horse swiftly went up to level 36, and to celebrate (and because 100 starvation points now only last 66 minutes) I started to use three-hour Pet Experience Potions, bringing points gained up to around 2000 per hour.

Keerella logged on early, just to transfer a few items over to MistressDomino, and I found a gift waiting for me! It was a special one-hour experience booster, with a message from Sheele saying that, if Kee was going to be the GM of Norcaine, she needed to get more levels. It was great to receive a gift like that - and doubly great that Sheele, who has been academically absent for quite a while, is able to take an interest in Last Chaos again now.

So Enchantrella logged on afterwards, and after transferring 300 quality stones, 150 imperfect stones, and 250 flawed stones across to Leo, headed out to do some afk mining to replenish her stocks a bit. She has to be checked up on every five to ten minutes, to be started on the next ore vein, and by mid-morning the following message had appeared: "Hey u! Well I guess you are busy working in real life - so when u get this message (barring any disconnections of course) I'll be here until Sunday, so please don't log into my Ratel account until Monday, hehe. Hope to hear from u later. Dam I missed u and the others terribly!" That was from Elvastar of course! It's fantastic to hear from him, and to know he'll be around over the next few days... but is this just a temporary return, is he going to vanish again for some weeks, starting on Monday...?

An hour or so with the Blood Frenzies got me the 23 more skill points I needed for the final level of Advanced Armoursmith, so when after my tea break I saw that Damor and Itura were online, I managed to get myself invited to join them fighting the Boucu Demons in Egeha. While Itura is in Norcaine, Damor is in a guild called Dominion, and a rogue from that guild, Escadalia, was also there, so we teamed up to "ks" from Damor; I used the Platinum Blessed Iris that Sheele had given me, and made pretty good use of it too, as I levelled up, and am now level 39. The fighting went pretty smoothly; I remember Damor mentioned once she was down to 60 hp, and a little later a Skinwalker got "pulled" along with the Boucu Demon so we all had to make a speedy trip back to town, but otherwise, a very productive time, and Damor did get a few armour drops. There was some talk of using a second iris, but Damor had been playing for a while and was starting to get tired - she has to be up at 6:00am tomorrow - so we stopped when she reached the 75% mark on the way to her next level. She is currently level 70, and ranked at #41 on the Cariae server group.

Speaking of Monday, that is, as well as being a day off in the UK ("Spring Bank Holiday"), Memorial Day in the USA, and we are promised double experience and skill exp all day, which should be useful. Before that we have for the Friday "Happy Hour" double experience, and over Saturday and Sunday the experience gain will be raised by a "mystery amount" - I'm not sure if it will just be the same amount all the time, or if they will be playing about with it. It is lucky that I bought my next set of mage armour, the level 45-47 (though one can start wearing such items without penalty 5 levels earlier) "Asuquted" set, today. It is all +4 for the usual little fairy to hover at one's shoulder, and only cost me 14 million, which seemed a good buy.

Thanks to Sheele's Iris, I got very nearly a whole 100% of a level from the trip to Egeha, and in all, including a couple of Merac quests afterwards, I got a little over 106% experience today. As well as me reaching level 39, my drake reached level 36, and has got 1500 or so points into his next level - and Leo's horse reached level 37 thanks to the pet experience-doubling pills, and indeed should only need around 4000 more points tomorrow to reach the target, level 38, by the time Leo logs out. Add 41 skill points, and it has been a very good day's work.

Onwards And Upwards - May 23rd

Despite a disconnection at about 11:30 UK time (which seems a quite common time for that to happen, I think), Leo managed to get the horse up to level 38 just before lunch - and afterwards, there was much moving about of mounts, so that Keerella now has the new one, coloured white of course. Unfortunately a quick test of the "Crying" skill, which is meant to make monsters in the area come in and attack, showed it to be very short-range, so not much use to gather dozens of Bandits or Elder Drakes or anything. Still, it looks impressive when done in town, heheh. Enchantrella's storm-coloured hatchling has gone across to Leo, just to be taken up a few levels - he started at just below level 15, is level 18 as my bedtime approaches, and hopefully will go up a bit more overnight. It's so restful to have a pet being levelled who only gets through about two quality stones an hour!

Damor, and her healer Itura, kindly invited me to join them in Egeha; once again Damor had got there early enough in Cariae-4 to get the best Boucu Demon spot, and when the double experience event started, slightly early at about ten to five, I went out to join them. I did die once, meaning that I am actually down one skill point on the day, but we didn't half kill a lot of demons, to the envy of other players who teleported in to see if the spot was available. One player, I think Damor said it was Superstar, was a bit naughty, and pulled the right-hand demon onto us while we were fighting the left-hand one, but we survived that. If you want to get a prime levelling spot during a double-experience event, you need to get there early, not turn up halfway through on the offchance...

Elvastar did come online as promised - he didn't join us in Egeha, but headed over to explore the new Dratan. Unfortunately he is suffering from kidney stones, so couldn't stay sitting up to use his computer for very long. He'll be off to hospital next Wednesday, apparently. And his laptop got attacked by viruses despite having Norton installed, so he hasn't been having a very good time of it lately.

General guild discussion was a bit more lively for a while, as you can imagine, and Damor has now discovered that I write a blog. Will she manage to track it down, I wonder? She levelled up to 71 now, and probably got through at least 75% of a level today, which at that level is excellent going. Helped by the double experience event of course, which was still going on when I logged out just before ten. I should mention that the player who plays Damor and Itura is actually a male student of chemistry, it's just the convention of this blog to use the gender of the actual in-game character, unless the character's name very firmly contradicts that, like Stanislav. I did see a titan in town today called Fifi, but luckily I have nothing to report about that character, lol.

Well, I started at level 39, and then moved up to 40, and was able to put on the gloves from my new armour set - and, later in the evening, moved up to 41, so that I could put on the shirt and skirt too; the skirt doesn't really "go" with the old black leather boots, as it is a more gauzy item, so I guess I need to keep going! 1711 pet points were gained, but the main figure to report, thanks to Damor's kindness, is the experience gain for the day: 175%!

Further Useful Progress - May 24th

Leo levelled Enchantrella's storm-coloured drake through the night and until late morning, so that he is now, conveniently, the same level as she is. After that, and a little bit of swapping around, including bringing the proceeds of MistressDomino's overnight sales across to Kee, Leo then took delivery of the level 4 red hatchling that my rogue had started fairly recently. I was slightly worried that I would have to use potions and Divine Shield, as a hatchling that young can't contribute much to a knight's armour rating, and I thought Elvastar had said that the pet had to be about level 11 before afk pet-levelling was possible, but good old Leo went and got a Treant, lured it back to the eyrie - and survived, so that by about ten in the evening the hatchling had gone up seven levels, and the pair of them (well, all three if you count the Treant) look ready for another overnight stint.

Keerella went out into the new Dratan to do a bit of exploring, and killed a few of the new level 39 deer, and then rode off further into the desert, past wafes and dragons and much more, feeling pretty safe on horseback, as monsters tend not to attack riders, and anyway you're out of range within seconds - and then suddenly I was slumping on the ground, dead. And my horse was dead too! It cost me 373,996 gold to "unseal" my horse so that I could use it again. Some parts of Dratan do look interesting, but I don't think I'll do any more solo exploring...

Luckily Damor came online, and I was able to hitch a lift to Egeha - she hadn't really meant to have a marathon session there today, but when she hitched her lift there, she found herself at our favourite Boucu Demon spot - and the person who'd used Recall was just leaving. Well, in circumstances like that, who could resist setting to? A couple of rogues from the guild she is in, Dominion, joined us, and I think I made about 20% experience before it was time for me to log out for food etc.

When I got back on, Damor and Itura were still there, so back I went, and after a little while we were joined by Rastatitan, who was hoping to level up, and used an experience-boosting Iris. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten that his parents were preparing a meal, so he had to leave the computer after about ten minutes. He was just high enough to team with Damor, unlike me, and she kindly suggested he sit on the hillside, within range, and got experience that way. That seemed to work - but Rasta did have a "red name", and some rogue teleporting in to check if the slot was available couldn't resist killing him. He was apparently still able to gain experience, but it must have been a bit of a surprise when he got back. Also in his Iris hour I think he got killed by a Demon - Damor has got me well-trained to mount my horse and use "pet return to village" when I see a Skin Walker rushing in too, or some other problem, so I survived...well, one death a day is quite enough! Anyway, Ras ended up only getting about 20% experience from his iris, and seemed to be having another problem as he was, soon after, wanting to contact a Game Master.

Damor made good progress, though not quite as much as she'd hoped; we agreed that we were both a bit too addicted to Last Chaos, but hey, it could be worse, it could be World of Warcraft! My feeling is that you can't really get beyond about level 25 unless you are addicted, and spend rather a large part of every day playing. I went up very nearly 60% in experience today, and got back that 1 skill point I lost yesterday, thanks to those deer. 1291 pet points helps things along, too. If the experience is a bit less than yesterday, well, there wasn't a double-experience event today... but there will be tomorrow!

I was trying to find the page of the Last Chaos website that the email newsletter links to, with its brief interview with the rather candid top mage on Hatzring, hints about the new kind of pet that's coming, and so on, but I couldn't find it from the website's front page. The forum was useful though - the "mystery" packages stand revealed if one goes into the Item Mall, goes to the "Packages" section, scrolls down to the bottom where they are listed, and clicks on each one's "details" button, which spills the beans nicely!

New Boots - May 25th

A busy day, with Leo hard at work levelling my rogue's drake, which has reached level 20 now. It would probably be higher, but the Treant got tired and vanished some time this evening, and I was too busy downstairs to check for some hours.

In the afternoon, unfortunately Damor wasn't able to get a good spot for the demons, and so joined an elite hunting party deep in Egeha, killing, I think, Dire Wraiths. However, as Itura wasn't needed there, she very kindly sent her over to the Dratan jail, Margaadum, to help me there. A bit earlier I'd had a quest to kill 25 Gnoll Soldiers, and teamed up with a knight while I was down in that part of Merac...we went on to the jail afterwards, and eventually found ourselves in a full 8-person party, with ambitions to go down to the third level there. We would probably have been okay if everyone had been at around our level, but too many of us, healers included, were below level 30, and might even have been too low to get experience, through being more than 15 levels below my 41. As you might expect, we got ambushed down there - I managed to bug out with about 30% health, I doubt if all the party were that lucky. But heck, at that level I'd not have dreamed of going anywhere near there, the Butchers would have been my target, back near to town. Going after high-level critters may get you experience, but you miss out on skill points, and at that sort of level, skill points are very important.

Anyway, I went back to the jail a little later with Itura, who, as with Damor, didn't stay in the party with me, just stayed locked on me and healed me - very useful, with the rather unfriendly canines there! We stayed on the ground level, so that I could run out easily and get horse buffs (mounts not being allowed indoors), then come back in. It worked well, though in the end Itura's laptop overheated and she had to log out. My drake took quite a lot of damage on both trips, it is definitely not a healthy place for pets.

I went to the quiz - well actually Kae went, as Damor had been asking if I had any healer armour. Itura was there, but Damor had luckily inherited our favourite Egeha spot from someone who was going to the quiz. Unfortunately I was so busy with my inventory and chat window open that I didn't notice the quiz starting, until I was suddenly rematerializing back in Randol!

So, I was free to change back to Kee, and Damor kindly Recalled me to join her. Escadalia joined us before long, too, and she and I partied together, ks'ing Damor as she killed the Boucu Demons. The double experience TeaTime event was still running, so things rolled along nicely. I did get killed once, I must remember that one can't jump on one's mount while still fighting, but on other occasions when a Skin Walker got attracted too, the old "get on horse" and "pet return to village" combination worked very well for all of us. As before, Damor kindly allowed us to pick up some of the cash the demons dropped, too.

Just before logging-out time Sheele came online, and chatted with us - confessing that it had been more boredom than a need to study that had kept her away so long. Let's hope the changes to Last Chaos, and re-encountering old friends, keeps her around this time, Norcaine surely needs her, especially as an Egeha party arranger and leader. There was some talk of trying to raise the guild to level six, which apparently means that Kae, as the current Guild Master, will need to scrape together 500 skill points... gold and some sort of small levy on members' experience gain is also involved. For that many skill points, a few guild parties, mobbing something appropriate, may be a good idea, if we can get enough people involved. There must be some critters of a suitable level in the new Dratan desert...

Anyway, I, that is to say Kee, levelled up - level 42 now! This meant I could put on the boots, and circlet, of my new armour, which is good, as the old leather boots did rather clash with the gauzy purple skirt. I never did find the circlet for the previous set, so it's good to have a complete five-part set again... though I really need to get a new staff...if I can find one. Too many mages looking for too few weapons, apparently, but at least I got lucky with finding the armour set. And the day's experience rise was 86%, about ten times what I'd have managed without Damor; 1356 pet points got added, and even, thanks to the jail trips, 29 skill points.

Progress - May 26th

Poor Leo had a disturbed night. When I woke and checked up on him at about 3:00am, there was no Treant - even though Leo was right up on the edge of the map, someone had actually come all the way up, and killed the Treant! I suspect "GRANDKNIGHT" as he has said "Hi" and "Party?" as recorded in the text box, but weird behaviour, you'd think if he was high enough level to be able to kill a Treant, he'd know that pet levellers tend to be "away from keyboard" and don't want their sparring partners killed. And then this morning I found the game had later closed with an "insufficient memory" error, something one does tend to get after a day or two of continuous play. Still, Leo has continued his good work, and in the morning the drake reached level 23. The decision to make was, do we stop at about level 23 with a suitable-level drake pet for my rogue, or do we continue and make a mounted dragon? I decided that my rogue's need for a pet to give an armour (or attack) buff takes precedence this time. After some general swapping around of stuff between characters, the suitably-buffed drake was handed back to my rogue, and then Barbarienne passed her pony, currently halfway through level 10, over to Leo to be levelled up a bit. While my other main characters have a mount and a drake, it looks as if she'll have a pony to go with her mount.

Yesterday I was looking at my Aeria Points recharge history, and not only have I received a couple of 50 point additions for voting in the online poll on the LC home page, but twice I have got 300 points for "newbie classes" or "LC newbie classes"... I have attended the classes held by Airadella a couple of times with suitably low level characters, and learnt a few things I didn't know, but I didn't realise that one got bonus ap for doing so! Airadella usually hands out a few bits of "Cake" or "Watermelon" afterwards, I assumed that was the only incentive.

In the afternoon Kee went and fought a few Gnoll Soldiers, and then headed for the Jail again, which luckily was less busy than last time, so that it was possible to stay by the doorway into the first room, and pick off the canines from there, so that my poor drake took very little damage. After a while Psykore came on the guild channel to ask if anyone was interested in a trip to Egeha to fight demons, to which I responded in the affirmative, and once I'd made sure that the party was about ready for action, moved over to the Cariae-6 server. I joined the party, but had a disconnection while I was still in town, which ought to have warned me that I was having problems... after logging back in I got Recalled to the spot, a valley with some Boucu Demons, and as usual some Skin Walkers close by too, and before too long the first demon was attacked. Unfortunately, at that point I was lagging out, so although I had right-clicked on the demon, and clicked on Terra Spear to join the attack, nothing happened, and as far as everyone else was concerned I just stood there like a lemon. I saw the action, I read the "Kee, what are you doing?" text, but my replies didn't show. I even had a message from Damor, but any response I typed in just vanished unseen. It was perhaps unfortunate that not only did I get a share of the experience, I was also the team member who got the loot allocated to them... the level 71 rogue "quickbirdrun pants +1". I reconnected, but my text messages, such as the apologies to Psykore, were slow appearing, indicating continuing lag, so it didn't seem a good idea to go back to them. I'm not sure that a party without any healing is wildly sensible out there anyway.

After taking a slightly early food break, I briefly went back to Egeha, but to the regular Boucu Demon spot, as Damor had asked to see what the Vanishing mage costume was like. It was Enchantrella who went, since she carries that around as the next costume she will be able to wear - Damor seemed more impressed with her current outfit, the Dark set, especially the skirt - what there is of it. Not many level 23 mages visit Egeha! I tried a few crafty hits at their current demon, but not unreasonably they all missed, and I didn't get any experience. Damor was actually partied with someone I didn't know, and Captianjack and one or two other people were also there, so there was no space for Kee to go back and ks then, unfortunately. It wasn't Damor who "had" the spot, it was only borrowed, apparently.

So, it was back to the jail, to try to make some use of the "double experience, double skill exp" event, which unfortunately started a bit late by European standards, at 8:00pm UK time - I even got a conveniently-timed quest to get the hides of five of the Spiked Canines, which took a while to get, but offered some useful experience, and five moonstones. Damor, since she couldn't find anywhere in Egeha with the double-double event approaching, even came along to help, luring large numbers of the canines for me to whack - and then, after I briefly returned to town to claim my reward, when I got back she'd rounded up a whole herd of Salamander Ruins, which she had outside the jail. They yielded pretty good experience for me, as I pulled one away at a time - I did manage to attract three at one point, but could easily teleport back into the jail to throw them off my scent.

Damor logged out, though I did catch a brief glimpse of her in Randol last thing, and I went back to the Merac Jail; the first room in there is a bit tricky, as there can sometimes be three or four other people there, and only a limited supply of Spiked Canines and the more aggressive Dire Spiked Canines, leading to the same poor little doggie being attacked by more than one person. And then people come running back from the lower levels, followed by a dozen or so of the beasts, plus the two-headed variety - when the people teleport out at the far end, that leaves the canines behind, so they start edging back the way they came - which can be a bit overwhelming, I'm sure I heard a player death-cry or two. It's awkward having to teleport outside before one can renew horse buffs, especially if the different area takes a while to load.

Still, for an (almost) Egeha-free day a 12% rise in experience wasn't bad - the extra experience etc didn't tempt me to stay up late. Only 407 pet points, since for almost all the time in the Jail I didn't have my drake equipped, since it's so easy for a pet to die there, but 56 skill points. At level 42 I've finally got enough attribute points in Intelligence to be able to get the spell Fame Field, and I've now got four out of its five levels. The fifth one, unfortunately, needs 194 skill points, so some more skill exp farming will be needed if I'm to max it out.

A Shorter Day - May 27th

Leo was busy through the night safely, but finally lost his Treant in the early afternoon - no foul play is suspected, if someone had come up and killed it I'd have got part of the experience from the kill, and there was nothing like that, it just lost interest and wandered off back to its friends and family. As the game was starting to get laggy, and I do end up getting error messages if the game runs for days and days, I closed Last Chaos down on the upstairs computer, then restarted and did a little stock-moving across from Kee to MistressDomino before setting Leo up again. The horse had reached level 19 by then, so it was almost high enough to give back to Barbarienne as her pet, but a few more hours seemed like a good idea.

Kee had logged on as usual after lunch, and managed to find her next set of armour, the level 50/52 mage set, made up of Shenimas gloves and boots, Bluses shirt and skirt, and Maerys circlet - it cost 30 million in gold, which is slightly towards the high end of the scale (more what Damor would sell at than buy at, she commented), but it is all +6. A bit later I even found a level 45 Mehtatolon Staff, but it isn't plussed at all (which is why it only cost 250,000 gold), so would need a bit of work done to its normal 178 magic attack before is overtakes my +9 Hatties Staff, which does 150, plus 103...and thus is, what, about the equivalent of a Mehtatolon Staff +6 or +7? The 50/52 mage outfit is a bit of a backward step, fashion-wise, to the old "black leather and boots" look, after the current 45/47 Asuquted costume's more gauzy effect, to my surprise.

Damor let me know that she had got access to our favourite Boucu Demon spot, starting in about half an hour - and the double experience and double skill exp event was still running, or had been restarted. While I waited, after the shopping I had time for one foray into the Merac Jail, and then moved over to Cariae-5, and joined Damor's party, to be Recalled to Egeha.

Unfortunately I found Cariae-5 rather laggy, and lost my connection a time or two - the second time I logged back in, Damor had decided to give up the spot and go and do something in real life for a change, since the double-double had at last ended. Sheele had just logged in, though, and with a little encouragement was persuaded to take over the slot, joined by me and Zeratus from Norcaine, and Sirstabalot and FallenSaintz. Damor stayed long enough to make sure we were able to do the job properly, reminding me to use Sloth at the start of the attack, and giving me some of the ten-minute Effort Scrolls; I was still lagging occasionally, with spells or text sometimes taking a long time to appear, but otherwise we worked pretty well, although we didn't have a healer. And then, just as the second ten-minute scroll was ending, one of the Boucu Demons, well, maybe a rogue's Snare attack didn't work, but although I think I just about managed to cast Sloth, I had a very bad bit of lag. As far as I was concerned I logged out with about 400 health, but looking at my experience level afterwards, it seems pretty certain that I did get killed. I then got disconnected twice in Randol in quick succession, so regretfully had to give up on the idea of returning to Cariae-5 Egeha, and headed for Cariae-3 instead, where I didn't find any lag or disconnection problems...

Anyway, all told I did end up over 20% experience ahead - and the owner of some quite good Green Stone magical accessories, which Damor discarded to give herself some inventory room. Oh, and 25 of Merchant Geres's Combination Boxes, Damor does like to buy such things in bulk! I did level up, too, reaching level 43. There wasn't really all that much more to the day, as I had to log out early, as I usually do have to on Tuesdays. Another brief trip to Merac Jail, recruiting Saton, a level 32 sorcerer (a new character for Strokez), by the arena in Randol in Cariae-2, and some guild chat...and that was about it. Thanks to those trips to Egeha, and those two ten-minute scrolls, I did go up by 21% in experience despite the lag-death, while my brief trips to Merac jail were worth 5 skill points. I even managed 234 pet points, somewhere along the line.

One of Those Days - May 28th

One of those days with way too many disconnections - and sometimes a few "time out" messages before one could even log in. Running out to fight stuff, and finding that the second critter one attacked just wouldn't die, followed by the "disconnected" message, just isn't fun. I logged in my rogue, and left the game to load, only to find that, just standing in the middle of Randol, she was already disconnected. Lucky I wasn't trying to level a pet then!

The new week's event, confusingly dated in the in-game instructions as ending yesterday, involves picking up extra drops of red carnations (which as a drop aren't actually named) and, for lower levels, yellow forsythia. The Guild Master and her advisers can take the red carnations to the Domain Merchant, and exchange them for a guild point... 100 of the points can be exchanged for a sort of coupon apparently, which gives a prize such as a "Summon Baal" scroll, but if Norcaine is going to expand, we need to get thousands of guild points. Once we get to guild level six, for which Kae will need to get 500 skill points, 6000 guild points would get us our own in-game guild message board, while 2000 points would allow us to recruit an extra five members...so I hope that guild members will collect the carnations and hand them over to Kae or Kee, so that they can be "banked".

The Yellow Forsythia were advertised as allowing a character of level 24 or below to upgrade an item of armour or a weapon (providing that it was of that character's type) by +3, but that was completely misleading. In fact, if you collect enough of them, perhaps 15 (though the numbers required are obscured by the lettering), you are just able to obtain a low-level item which is already +3...so rather less exciting than the possibility to upgrade a higher-level item you already have, maybe from +3 to +6!

As usual, the Item Mall had some new goodies this morning - and as usual, the Americans who log in straight after the servers go up again after their maintenance downtime had bagged all the limited-number bargains. So, yet another annoyance, sigh... Lucky smelting stones for 79 aeria points would have been a nice bargain, even the second tranche at 99 ap are pretty cheap, but they only have the 149 ap ones left now. Similarly Heaven Stones at 99 ap vanished before breakfast, while only ones at 149 ap remain, though I think HS are overpriced in the mall anyway, since they do drop in-game, and usually sell for around 625,000 gold now. You could buy items in the mall for 100 ap that you could sell for rather more than that...

The afternoon was no better, connection-wise. Leo managed to acquire another level 10 pony, which had been in the possession of my own low-level knight, but got disconnected just as he was luring his chosen Treant towards the eyrie, and a minor character or two couldn't even kill ten jaguars before getting dumped back to the desktop. Kee signed in briefly to alert the Norcaine people who were on about the uses of red carnations, but after a couple of minutes, first her text got entered after a lag-delay, and then not at all. Hello desktop! Why Last Chaos can't just return one to the log-in screen I don't know, like any sensible game, rather than close completely. It would be even better if it didn't drop the connection in the first place, of course.

Luckily, in the evening the connection finally sorted itself out, so Leo was able to start training his pony, which soon began levelling up. I mentioned on the guild channel that Leo would be available to give any guild member's pet a bit of a boost, if they have a pet which is a bit too low to give them as much of a buff as they'd like. He might even take it all the way to level 31 or so, but a contribution to the number of quality stones etc needed for that would be appreciated! At some point I'd like him to level up Kee's drake a bit, as it's only level 36, seven levels behind her, and not getting any points from the fighting in Maargadum Jail, but that will take a lot of stones, and some pretty frequent running up and down stairs to keep an eye on the starvation bar.

Well, Kee did some fighting in the aforementioned Jail in Merac, but I must confess that I was finding it very boring - buffing up, going in, killing Dire Spike Canines until the buffs wear off, then dashing out again, regenerating, and repeating. It's surprising how much damage those canines do, even with Kee's horse buffs and good close-range evasion. I managed over 3%, and then sent Kae in for a change, but only lasted for under 1% then. Kee got no pet points at all of course, those canines eat pets alive if you equip them in there, but did manage to gain 20 skill points. I also picked up 22 red carnations, anyway, which have been handed in to the Domain Merchant, so that's a start... 7978 guild points to go!

A Productive Day - May 29th

The overnight "afk" work didn't go too well - Upstairs, Leo "encountered a problem" and "had to close", while downstairs MistressDomino's attempts to sell her usual wide range of fine bargains (it says here) was rudely interrupted by a Microsoft security update, which arrogantly decided that it needed to restart the computer without asking first. Still, Leo had got the current pony up two levels before his close-down, and the pony became a horse (level 16) just after breakfast. MistressDomino had managed to take in 3,866,400 in gold, but most of that was from selling four Golden Magnifying Glasses at 900,000 each. But logging in to check on that, I encountered JustCindy, who wanted to sell 185 moonstones at only 10,000 each, so there ought to be a good profit on that deal.

As the Yellow Forsythias only drop for characters below level 24, I think, there is an incentive to play one's lower-level characters, so that is what I was doing for most of the afternoon. Barbarienne fought the Great Horn Beasts and the Drakes, while my level 10 knight, SirDarth, obtained enough Jaguar teeth to allow Merchant Geres to make a couple more of his famous necklaces. I must transfer some herbs to him, his poor hatchling is down to 11 health, the Jaguars seem to hurt him even when SirDarth does the attacking. The idea is, tentatively, to get him into the Guardian scheme on Saturday, with Keerella as his Guardian... this week's "Family" special events include some sort of extra bonus for successful padawans that begin their apprenticeship before the next server maintenance. So, I'll have ten days to get him to level 20. I don't want to start on Friday as I probably will only be able to play in the evening tomorrow.

Damor was asking if I could get her one of this week's special Item Mall offers, the "2fer" special offer on the Rune of Protection II - 599 aeria points for the two runes, which may seem expensive but is less than the usual cost of a single rune. She had managed to find me a level 45 Mehtatolon Staff +6, so we exchanged that (plus a lower level +6 wand she'd already passed over to me to try to sell, but which may one day be useful to Enchantrella) for the runes, and she attempted to buff up her top-level staff. All did not go well though, and it reverted to +10 (the runes only stop the item from breaking, they don't stop it losing a level or two), so I handed over another "2fer" in exchange for some cash and some other minor items I'd been intending to sell for her. Browsing around I saw a level 49 mage staff, +6, for 10 million and was very tempted, but Damor assured me that it was overpriced, and that I shouldn't buy it.

By then though Damor had moved to Egeha, so to get my gold I crossed to Cariae-5, registered for a party, accepted the invitation to join Damor's party, and accepted the "Recall" to join her - the usual deal. And once I was there, and could see that she had got our favourite Demon-bashing spot, well, I volunteered to stick around and, er, "help", heheh! Sheele joined us too for a while; knowing a good thing when I saw it, I didn't log out for my usual leisurely tea, but just made a quick sandwich and ate it at the keyboard. I think in all we were there for very nearly four hours, during which I went up by approximately 40%. I only died once, when I was too busy typing an explanation of a slightly cryptic remark I'd made to notice that there was a problem - on a couple of other dodgy occasions, I managed the old "mount up and return to village" deal, by the skin of my teeth. The second of those occasions rather puzzled me at the time, We were fighting the left-hand Boucu Demon when another of them came into sight, running down the road at full speed straight for us! I only just got out of there in time, materialising in the Egeha village with around 400 health. Damor explained to me afterwards that it was a rogue using Invisibility who had pulled the Boucu Demon onto us - very sneaky, a way of killing without your name going red, which would work even in a non-PvP server. A bit like the idiot who lured the Elder Drakes to where the pet levellers were a week or so back.

We finally yielded the spot to some of Damor's Dominion guildmates; I didn't leave any too soon, as most of them seemed to arrive in the village seconds after I left. I do remember one of them saying, as they attacked the Boucu Demon, "Oops forgot the buffs", come to think of it! Zeratus had asked earlier if I had any of the Golden Magnifying Glasses left, so I sold him one at the Special Guildie Price of 800k, and then, after a quick look around the shops, headed out to Merac's Maargadum Jail to fight the Dire Spike Canines... slightly handicapped by the fact that I'd bought 43 relatively cheap ToolAids, so was 29.04% overweight, and thus with reduced dexterity. There was a mage called GiGi there for a short time, running around in either a very early mage costume or her underwear, and dying approximately once every ten seconds. Either she's very eccentric, or below the level when dying incurs a death penalty - or perhaps it's not her character, and she was arranging a surprise for a friend...?

Anyway, it is good to be able to report a 41% advance on the experience front; 6 more skill points, despite the almost complete absence of skill experience in Egeha when you're fighting monsters 41 levels above you, isn't bad either, while 912 pet points is a step in the right direction too. That doesn't include the many thousands of pet points that Leo's current horse has gained today of course; at the time of typing he is well into level 20, and hopefully will add another level or two overnight...if there aren't any more Microsoft urgent updates, that is...

A Day of Two Parts - May 30th

I do like to see the top half of the on-screen text box saying "Your pet leveled up" five times - and so it was this morning, with Leo's current horse reaching level 23. That's Leo's last all-night session for a while, as when his horse reaches level 24 the speed at which he gets through the starvation bar doubles, so that it lasts four hours instead of eight. However, the curse of 11:30 struck again - that's 3:30am for the US East Coast, a fairly quiet time, but it was annoying to get Leo disconnected, and Barbarienne also who was farming some green herbs. At least it gave a chance for Kee to pass those 43 ToolAids over to MistressDomino, but it was 40 minutes before normal business could be resumed.

I managed to get on Last Chaos to actually play just in time for the "teatime" event, which was double experience today. It started half an hour late, but went on for an extra half hour. Damor had managed to get her favourite spot to fight Boucu Demons in Cariae-5, so I swiftly volunteered to join her, and we slogged away - I think we only had to make a quick escape to the village once, and I got there with 300 health remaining. By the end of the double experience, I'd gone up almost exactly 75%, getting me comfortably into level 44. It's very kind of Damor to help me along like this, it's a difficult stage to go through...once I get a level 49 staff, suitably enhanced, it will be time to join full Demon-hunting parties...

When the double experience ended, the GMs announced that we were switching to double skill exp until the US teatime four hours later, so it was time to go and do a bit of skill point farming. And that too is something I don't find comfortable to solo at this level - the early rooms of Maargadum Jail are not easy, and the Dire Spike Canines don't give a huge amount of skill exp, while they take a while to kill, and tend to come in in twos and threes. And then people run back from the lower levels, bringing a dozen or more of the aggressive Dire Spike Canines, and the Two Headed Canines as well, into the room, before vanishing via the teleporter, so the canines then attack anyone else who's around. And sometimes the game crashes when I try to leave, which I need to do every time the horse buffs wear off, and loading the Dread Garden, and loading the Jail again, can be slow too... Oh, and the place is crowded, so that people ks by accident, so that someone is often saying "don't ks", and gets replied to that he's ks-ing too. And pets get attacked, and people die. In short, not my favourite place to solo!

Zeratus kindly rode down to the Jail to pass over the 54 red carnations, or " ", he had collected - that brings the total currently in Kee's inventory to 80, but there must be some on other characters, and hopefully other guild people are saving them up. Zeratus was saying he might not be on for a couple of days, except perhaps very briefly, so he thought it was a good idea to hand over his stock now.

Well, the total experience gain for the day, almost entirely from ks-ing Damor in Egeha, was 76%; I got another 820 pet points there, which may not seem a huge amount, but I do tend to miss when I am attempting to hit Boucu Demons, about two-thirds of the time. 20 skill points, though, shows that me soloing the Jail just isn't really working. Still, Leo got his current horse up to level 26 just before his logging-off time, which was an upbeat way to end the day.

Disconnected - May 31st

Another day with absolutely lousy connectivity. "Disconnected", "Cannot Contact Server", "Timed Out", "Send Error Report?" - they all came up with monotonous regularity. It was a struggle to get one new character through the starting "personal dungeon" sequence, it took three or four attempts and even then the game had to be restarted before she could arrive in Randol. It's a good time to make a new character though, as far as I could see every Fox she killed outside Randol before reaching level four dropped a Yellow Forsythia box. In my case that was 34 of them, though it would have been more if some parts of the personal dungeon hadn't been gone through three or four times.

If I'd known that things were going to be so bad I'd have held off on registering SirDarth as Keerella's apprentice, but that was the first thing I did today - Kee was a guardian once before, but after a while it looks as if that status, and the constant flood of messages about new players arriving in Randol, automatically concludes. So SirDarth has ten days to get up to level 20, if he wants a special weapon as a reward.

I was wondering if, as skill exp is rather easier to get at low levels, certainly the foxes and wolves seemed to be giving masses of it for very little ordinary experience, so maybe SirDarth, or a junior mage, should be the one to grind through 500 skill points, and then be temporarily appointed Guild Master of Norcaine to get us from level 5 to level 6, where the benefits of being a guild do finally start to become apparent...but on further investigation, I think with the purchase of a "reset special skills" card Enchantrella is the character to call on. It would be easy to take some points away from her processing skills, in fact we could probably do it right now - except that the guild master has to be at least level 30. So, some more general work to do there, but I think it is the simplest way.

One thing I'd not known was that if there's a disconnection, it is best to ignore the "Disconnected" window, and use "Z" to bring up the normal "log out" window, and, well, log out - that usually avoids having to load up the game again from scratch, though there does seem to be a risk of the old "Send Error Message?" along the way. You will probably find that the "account is already logged in" when you first re-enter the password, but the second time should work.

There was a special "Upgrade Event" from 7:00 to 8:30pm UK time, with an increased chance of an upgrade to armour or weapons using a Heaven Stone being successful. Unfortunately I don't have a level 49 staff, but I did manage to buy a level 53 Darkwhite Staff earlier, and using Heaven Stones, Lucky Smelting Stones, and after +6 Heaven Stones again with a Rune of Protection I (from the "2fer" special offer in the Item Mall) managed to get it up to +10 - which is quite enough I hope, unless I decide to add a foolproof but expensive Extreme Stone to take it up to +11. I also got a bit carried away and upgraded my current Mehtatolon Staff from +7 to +10. I tried to upgrade a piece of armour too, as I had one rune left over, but I lagged out while doing it, so it failed without even the usual failure message. I'd taken 20 HS out of storage, and rather than put my leftover 5 back, sold them at the unusually high price of 750,000 gold, as they were in rather high demand from people wanting to do an upgrade. I let Captianjack have one for 200k less, though. But my supply of aeria points took a bit of a beating, buying packs of the "2fers"...which I suppose was the general idea behind the event.

Strangely, while Kee continued to get very quick disconnections in Randol, SirDarth finally settled down, and was able to fight the Jaguars, to get those teeth so that Geres can make some more necklaces, without further problems - though earlier it had taken about three reconnections per necklace. SirDarth was soon able to move over to the level 12 Sasquatches, and the level 13 Werewolves, and worked steadily, so that by my logging-out time he was a quarter of the way into level 13 himself. And his hatchling has reached level 6, so is starting to give a useful armour boost. For some reason at around 9:30 an unannounced period of double skill exp began, I just noticed that the amount I was getting per Sasquatch had doubled, so I probably stayed fighting a little longer than I would have otherwise.

Well, no fighting to report for Kee today, and no pet levelling for Leo, but at least we have transferred some items over to the new character, which is what she is designed for, making a bit of room in Darth's and Kee's inventories, and Darth is making useful progress... while Kee's upgraded staffs should prove useful. Darth has a good supply of the Yellow Forsythias now, I must get his next armour set sorted out, using the flowers, before this week's special arrangements come to an end.